The Feguson Center Food Court

Most students at the University of Alabama have either been to the Ferguson Center or have heard about the Ferguson Center. The Ferguson Center is a student resource center that offers numerous services to the students. A major service of which many students have taken advantage of is the Ferguson Center’s food court with eleven restaurants that offer several different styles of food. In order for the Ferguson Center’s food court to maintain a good reputation around campus, it must have a large selection of quality food that the more than 28,000 students can afford and enjoy in a clean, comfortable atmosphere.
To begin with, the food court should be large enough to accommodate the large student population. However, many people can attest that the food court at the Ferguson Center is too small for a college of this magnitude. The Ferguson Center was built to accommodate the student population in 1973, but since then the student population has increased exponentially over the past three decades. During class hours, the size of the food court is satisfactory, but during lunch hours a student can stand in line for several minutes waiting to receive his or her food or to pay for it. After the student has paid for his or her food, it is very difficult for a student to find a vacant table, especially while trying to navigate through the large crowd of people.
Comfort and cleanliness are both important factors that contribute to a student’s experiences at the Ferguson Center food court. The chairs are comfortable and there is usually music playing, but many students cannot enjoy either source of comfort because the large crowd makes it too difficult to find a seat and too loud to hear the music. Another problem is that the workers at the food court take proper procedures to clean the tables, but there are not enough workers to have the tables cleaned often. This usually results in students having to use tables that are not as clean as they could be.
Another concern for students is that the price of the food should be affordable and within reason. Unfortunately, the food at the Ferguson Center food court is considered by many to be far too expensive. For example, one slice of pizza is $3.69, and one bottle of Vitamin water is $1.79. Because of this pricing a number of students would agree that they could go to several other restaurants or supermarkets around campus and find the same items in a lower price range. College-age students tend to eat larger amounts of food than other age groups; therefore, students spend an excessive amount of money on lunch at the food court.
Lastly, there should be a variety of food with good quality. As mentioned earlier, there are eleven restaurants from which to choose at the food court, including Sushi, Burger King, Chick-fil-a, Salad Garden, and many more. As a result, the food court definitely offers students a large variety of food. The quality of the food, however, is less than satisfactory. The pizza’s quality is worse than the quality of some of the cheapest pizza places in town, and some students have reported that the barbeque has a bad color and does not look fresh. Consequently, many students may decide they don’t have the appetite to try it.
The Ferguson Center food court presents some good qualities in its attempt to obtain approval from the students. However, some aspects of the food court cause it to fall short in giving the many students a clean, comfortable environment in which they can obtain an affordable, quality meal.